Was Bill Paxton Married? He & His Wife Were Partners For Nearly 30 Years

Respected and prolific actor Bill Paxton died Saturday due to complications from surgery. Paxton's wife of 30 years, Louise Newbury, and their two children Lydia and James, survive the dedicated husband and father.

Not much is known about Newbury, in part due to Paxton's confessed hesitancy to talk about his family. Paxton's show, Big Love, about a polygamous marriage, brought a lot of attention to his personal life that the actor specifically tried to mitigate. In a 2007 interview with Buddy TV, Paxton said he doesn't bring up his wife much because “people who advertise themselves as virtuous family people usually get caught splitting up the next day.”

However, that attitude may have been softening shortly before Paxton's death. Just earlier this month, Paxton told the romantic story of how he met his wife on The Late Late Show with James Corden. While filming the 1983 movie Lords of Discipline in London, Paxton saw a young woman waiting in line for the bus, and though he didn't use the words "love at first sight," it sounds an awful lot like what he described.

"I met my wife on the number 37 bus on the Twickenham High Street, in London," Paxton said during the interview with Corden. "I saw a gal in a bus queue... She looks my way as she gets on the bus, and that was all the incentive I needed." According to DailyEntertainmentNews.com, Newbury was 17 at the time, and the couple had a transatlantic relationship for five years before they even lived in the same country.

Paxton said that Newbury was by his side and he by hers, through all the difficult and wonderful times that built their life together. “We’ve been through it all,” Paxton said in a 2010 interview with Los Angeles Magazine. “She knew me when I was struggling. She was a student. We met on a bus in London. I’ve seen her give birth. I was with her when her father died. Then we mixed our blood watching these two kids grow up.”

Though Paxton once said he didn't like to brag about his family, he seems to have been powerless to stop himself from doing it. Luckily for them, that means the signs of his love are enshrined in his interviews over the years. Paxton's untimely death may have taken him away from his wife and children, but his love for them lives on in the memories he shared with the world.